Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Pooches: Dogs, Romance, & Practicality

Several months ago, I read this article in the New York Times describing how outrageous rents, housing costs, and expired leases often force people in the city to move more quickly into relationships. It was only recently that I realized that having dogs can also force people to make drastic decisions about relationships.
See, when E and I first started dating, Miss M and I lived in a 1-bedroom apartment up in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. I had to take a 45 minute bus ride--between waiting for the bus and morning traffic--each morning to get to the school where we both taught. At the same time, E owned his place and lived a mere 1 1/2 miles from school. Before we could do anything together, I always had to make sure Miss M was accounted for. It became this huge ordeal where we would either have to go all the way up to my apartment to feed and walk her, stay there, and make the huge trek back to school in the morning; or, we would pick her up and she would stay over at E's place, and I'd have to figure out how to get her back home. Many of our early dates were actually spent transporting Miss M around town.

Since Chicago transportation is unforgiving, we thought it was easier to just let Miss M. move into E's place. And I followed shortly after. Here is Miss M in the early days making herself right at home:

I justify it with the fact that E and I are practical people and we knew we were going to get married, but Miss M definitely accelerated our relationship.
How does this compare with everyone else's experiences?

I owned my own house in the country when we began dating. The Knight got me Mugsy, but at the time, my cousin was living with me and she had several dogs and cats. When she moved out, Mugsy was a rotten only child, so we got Fred. While Fred was legally and definitely heart-wise the Knight's dog, I made it clear that if things didn't progress as they seemed to be going, Fred would have to legally become mine...

I haven't been able to comment much lately with being in London, but I wanted to let you know that your blog makes me smile and get a dose of happy pit bull stories every time I visit. It also makes me long for my girl, but in the mean time I'm fun dose of doggy time through your blog!! Thank you!~P's Mom

Well we don't have much input because when our momma and dad got married they had no fur kids and then slowly they had one kitty...then two...and then dad totally tricked momma into getting me after they had their little boy...and then Mia came along....and then....just kidding, thats it for now. I had ya going didn't I?! TEE-HEE

That is hilarious!(So glad to see E got himself a much cooler couch after your union ;)

Joey and I had just been dating a couple of months when we found Haleigh and just had to adopt her.

Signing her adoption paperwork was way more stress and permanent feeling then signing our marriage certificate.

This was a big deal. We were signing up for parenthood! And jointly so out went the "your"s and "mine"s, we had an "ours".

I was the practical one and we had to have the what-if-we-break-up conversation.Well, the only fair resolution we could find was that whoever did the actual breaking up forfeited custdial rights of Haleigh. That person would get visitation, but that would be it.

The funny thing was I knew there was NO WAY I would let Haleigh go anywhere and Joey wasn't either we kind of sealed the deal on our relationship.

What I find so messed up is I've worked for DCS for almost 11 years and I see parents all the time who have less regard for their human children then we do for our furry ones. It's so sad.

But good times for our furkids - they have a mommy and daddy that love them and got married so "we can all be a family" as we told them.

My only regret - is like y'all we had a destination wedding and they were not there for it. If I could change one thing that would be it...

Ha! Well, when we got married, it was the first time my husband or I had ever lived without a dog, because we lived in an apartment for the first three years of our marriage. We had to make due with *gasp* two cats, a cockatiel and some fish. We closed on our house the end of October and on December 30 we brought home our first dog together!

well, my husband and i didn't have dogs until after we got married.when we were dating, his roommate had a very hairy cat, and i am allergic to cats, so i definitely avoided his apartment when possible!by the way, i love the picture of miss m sitting on the couch. haha!the booker man and asa's mama

I agree with Resued Pitty Mommy, some people's kids don't get treated as nicely as our pets! We're in Europe right now and it's very strange to see dogs on subways, inside shops etc... and off leash!! Can you imagine if you'd tried to take Miss M on public transportation?